24 hour billion inf challenge

[Yomo Kimyata]

Can I start a new character from scratch and earn a billion inf in 24 hours?

 

tl;dr not this time, but definitely doable.  24 hours from character screen I ended up with 830,507,909 inf and had 82 items for sale.  Eventually that should be over 1bn, but 24 hours is 24 hours.

 

(EDIT:  This was purely to see if I could do it.  If you need or want inf for whatever reason, there are a lot of ways to do it that are better than this.  I daresay that no one *needs* billions of inf, and that you can have a great play experience without it.  If you do, however, want ways to earn inf through marketing, there are a bunch of good guides and good threads in this forum, and I think that everyone is more than willing to help  you out.

 

This particular challenge was self-imposed, and was neither easy nor fun.  So it goes.)

 

=======

 

We know how easy it is to make inf on the AH, but a lot of that involves patience.  I wanted to issue myself a challenge and see if I could start a new alt and, without using any "inside" knowledge or cross trading with my other marketers, end up with a billion inf in 24 hours.  I wanted to try out Dual Blades, so I rolled up a Fire/DB tanker with dual chain saws and named her Arboreal Reaper.  Her arch enemies are the Devouring Earth, and she has dedicated her life to burning down those evil trees.  I started at noon on Friday, as it was a slow day and I had the day off.

 

I ran through Outbreak, sold my enhancements to trainer, sold my inspirations to the AH, and got to work.   I turned on double xp, put settings on +0/x3, bosses, and started running initial missions for Susan Davies.  Two or three missions got me to level 6, so I went to KR and got my radio.  Tuned it back to +1/x1, ran three radio missions, bank job, get my jet pack.  Head to the Hollows at level 9.  Run first two arcs, ending up barely beating Frostfire as an EB.  This got me to level 12 and I stopped leveling the Reaper there.  By the way, Dual Blades on a tanker is an absolute disaster.  I'm be sitting there for several minutes hacking at a boss, doing like 1% of his bar every few seconds, all the while listening to that horrible hacking sound.  Even white minions would take at least 30 seconds each.  I'm sure that it will blossom later, but I digress.

 

Marketing-wise, as always, the first few million inf is the hardest.  If I had been smart, I would have gotten the Atlas Park exploration badges for 5 merits, then used those merits on crafted recipes.  That probably would have saved me an hour or two.  But I forgot, and defaulted to buying and vendoring or trading white and yellow salvage.  This was while I was leveling the Reaper, so after each mission I'd bank and reload.  When I had about 700k, I bought 6 converters (which I could have had for free) and three level 15 Quickfoot recipes.  Converted by Running, and one of the three was a Stealth.  Sold that for over a million, reinvested in converters, and got to work.

 

My strategy was just about pure rare roulette.  I invested lots into recipes of lvl 15 travel uncommon recipes (running, leaping, flight, teleport).  Convert by travel, then convert the resulting rare.  Forgot that one of the flight recipes requires rares, boo.  Eventually bought the rares and crafted them anyway.  I bought lots and lots of Undermined Defenses recipes at level 21.  That was probably my saving grace.  There were hundreds of them for sale, which I picked up for up to 30k a pop.  Convert to Touch of Lady Grey, then convert by rare.  Then I added Mocking Beratement recipes at lvl 31.  Lots of those come up for sale during the day; convert by Taunt to Perfect Zinger and roll.  It was important to have a few different levels to work, since there is a lot less overlap across rares.  I did a little flipping:  mostly when LotG non-procs started selling under 4mm.  But mostly rare roulette.  If I had more time, I probably would have tried to work a few tried and true market segments like defense, damage resistance, pvp, but then I would be stuck waiting to see if someone else would sell me supply.  As it worked out, I was generally able to buy all my recipes up front, then had bids fill as time went by.

 

Now, crafting a billion inf worth of IOs really isn't much of an accomplishment.  (Call it 2 billion, since I figure I bought at least 10,000 converters, maybe a lot more.)  Selling those IOs in less than 24 hours is a huge accomplishment.  There are not very many, if any, segments where there is a strong, deep bid; people tend to buy when they want things, and if they do put in wait and see bids they are mostly lowball.  I could have gone the easy route and just listed everything I crafted at 500k.  But I figure I would have made at best half as much inf that way.  I can talk about my crafting strategy and pricing strategy, but in general I didn't hit bids unless I thought the bids were good.  As the day went on, prices on things got lower.  Finally in the last hour, I started putting things on fire sale.

 

I doubt I'll do this again, but if I did, I would definitely use merits for converters a lot earlier.  I went out of my way to make sure that I did not buy or sell from my other marketing alts, which actually is a far bigger deal than you might imagine; I estimate that cost me 100mm in and of itself.  I probably put in about four or five sessions for an hour each yesterday and this morning.  I had 100mm+ by about 6pm, and from there on out it was just about crafting until I got sick of it or I ran out of AH slots.

 

This is obviously not the most efficient use of playing time or marketing time.  Just wanted to see what I could do.

 

Happy hunting!

 

(EDIT:  ten hours later: 1,018,758,107 and selling 13 items.)

 

Edited February 16, 2020 by Yomo Kimyata
Stuff

[Troo]

In my opinion this post should be removed. (add: or reworked)

 

Edited February 15, 2020 by Troo
concern heard

[nihilii]

Fantastic thread, Yomo. For all the speedrunning interest we're seeing in Task Forces, I'd love to see similar attempts at influence generation. There's really cool strategies to design around the challenge. Getting Atlas explo badges for 5 merits?? What a neat trick!

[Troyusrex]

2 hours ago, Troo said:

In my opinion this post should be removed. (add: or reworked)

 

Troo, can you say more about why you think this post should be removed? I rather liked the concept and saw nothing wrong with the post. 

[Troo]

I like what was documented and that Yomo took the time to put it together.

 

"24 hour billion inf challenge" while not inaccurate, it is likely click bait for new or returning players.

 

The premise sets an expectation that if someone is not a billionaire they are doing it wrong. (I see a number of unintended consequences)

This then becomes similar to the plethora of 'level 50 in mere hours' brag posts which talk some out of actually playing the game.

Side note: Spamming global channels to sit in a farm in order to skip to 50 and then complaining about lack of content with 100-ish badges is it's own special irony.

 

I don't think Yomo is trying to brag. They are just looking at it as a challenge and documenting their marathon effort.

[Troo]

Acquiring 10 merits to get 30 enhancement converters from the merit vendor is a jumpstart. 

Earning additional Black Market/Auction House transaction slots is also helpful.

• Level 1 = 45 slots (I think)
• Level 10 = 135 slots (I think)

Challenge wise the jump between the following feels similar: 10 million = 100 million = 500 million = 1B

Time being a major factor.

 

Many serious crafter/marketers have amassed almost embarrassing Smuag like fortunes.

A similar challenge maybe to be how fast to a lesser number, after that it may just be endurance. Kudos to Yomo for having a day off.. and for their newest Smaug.

[Yomo Kimyata]

45 minutes ago, Troo said:

I like what was documented and that Yomo took the time to put it together.

 

"24 hour billion inf challenge" while not inaccurate, it is likely click bait for new or returning players.

 

The premise sets an expectation that if someone is not a billionaire they are doing it wrong. (I see a number of unintended consequences)

This then becomes similar to the plethora of 'level 50 in mere hours' brag posts which talk some out of actually playing the game.

Side note: Spamming global channels to sit in a farm in order to skip to 50 and then complaining about lack of content with 100-ish badges is it's own special irony.

 

I don't think Yomo is trying to brag. They are just looking at it as a challenge and documenting their marathon effort.

Huh.  I, too, was puzzled, and I assumed that you took umbrage at my hate for Dual Blades.  They really suck at level 12.

 

I think that I've repeatedly said that there is plenty of influence available for anyone who wants to pursue it.  I don't think anyone needs to be a billionaire, but if they want to be, and are willing to put in some effort, they certainly can be.  I can see your point (and I cannot stand the power leveling followed by complaints of lack of content), but I don't see this as a real problem.  I'll put some disclaimers in the original post, but I don't think I need to change the title.  I meant to phrase it as a challenge, and if someone else wants to take up the challenge, that would be great!

 

Oh, and you are wrong about one thing.  I'm totally bragging.  That was hard to pull off in the time span!  I'm not going to solo a MoITF anytime soon, so consider this my contribution to CoH accomplishments.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Troo said:

Many serious crafter/marketers have amassed almost embarrassing Smuag like fortunes.

Not really sure how having the inf to build literally any character you'd want is embarrassing, but to each their own.

 

I could make the argument that taking the time to build an SG base like that is embarrassing since all you really need is some storage and transporters, but I also recognize that different people play the game in different ways and I don't shit on them for it.

Edited February 15, 2020 by macskull

[Troo]

Maybe I was speaking to the ALMOST embarrassing Smuag like fortune I've amassed. = )

 

"Never be embarrassed about success but try and be humble." - some really rich dude

[Fan Mail]

I don't quite have Marketing down to how good you are but I was working Saturday from time to time throughout the day.  With just a little effort I probably made 150-200 million doing the roulette routine.  Maybe 2-3 hours worth of marketing/crafting/buying/selling.  

 

I did start out with 20 million by converting Merits to Converters though.  

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 2/15/2020 at 5:04 PM, Troo said:

Acquiring 10 merits to get 30 enhancement converters from the merit vendor is a jumpstart. 

Earning additional Black Market/Auction House transaction slots is also helpful.

• Level 1 = 45 slots (I think)
• Level 10 = 135 slots (I think)

Challenge wise the jump between the following feels similar: 10 million = 100 million = 500 million = 1B

Time being a major factor.

 

Many serious crafter/marketers have amassed almost embarrassing Smuag like fortunes.

A similar challenge maybe to be how fast to a lesser number, after that it may just be endurance. Kudos to Yomo for having a day off.. and for their newest Smaug.

The AH slots are key.  In theory, you would be better off leveling as high as you can.  Boy, anyone remember fighting for an extra marketing slot when we only had, like, a dozen?

[Ukase]

This is a fun idea. My problem is I like to park my toons in ouro to get Chronologist first. I know I can clear 400m in a day pretty quickly, just checking in every few hours to craft and convert. I think it might be best to do a dfb with 2xp to get as high a level as you can get in a few runs so you can get the easy reward merits from more zones without trips to the hospital. Those easy converters from merits are a real jumpstart to the big money. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 2/15/2020 at 3:35 PM, nihilii said:

Fantastic thread, Yomo. For all the speedrunning interest we're seeing in Task Forces, I'd love to see similar attempts at influence generation. There's really cool strategies to design around the challenge. Getting Atlas explo badges for 5 merits?? What a neat trick!

In retrospect, I would also run a villain rather than a hero for faster speed times.  Your very first mission arc from Kalinda gets you 7 merits, but the first blueside arc I had been using was the Hollows, which takes a lot longer to get to.  Those merits exchanged for converters ASAP are a tremendous head start.

[FourSpeed]

Interesting thread, and one heck of an accomplishment in a mere 35 hours.  Gratz. You didn't beat your challenge, but you were really close, and it's still an impressive piece of effort all the same.

 

I used to do a bunch of marketing back on live for myself, and as part of the Crazy 88's SG, but I haven't really done much here.  In general, prices are SO low here, and inf is so Easy to earn here that I haven't really bothered all that much.  I have two accounts (for dual boxing, and powerlevelling up the handful of toons from live that I wanted back up to speed quickly).  The mains on both of those accounts have about 1/2-3/4 billion on them, and the farmer on each of those accounts has ~1 billion on them (to jump start any other toons I decide to run), and that pretty much covers my needs.

 

For active characters I'm playing I just do Recipe Vendoring based on the old Guide I wrote back on live, and that easily gets the toon ~200 million with minimal effort. That's plenty enough inf to kit them out with nice shinies as they're maturing to L50.

 

That said, I still do enjoy reading about some of the newer strategies that HC makes possible these days, but I couldn't imagine putting in the marathon effort that Yomo did.  

 

That's some impressive work, so Gratz from an old-school Ebil Marketeer from the Live days...    😉

 

Regards,

4 

Edited February 27, 2020 by FourSpeed

[ThrillMill]

On 2/27/2020 at 9:33 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

In retrospect, I would also run a villain rather than a hero for faster speed times.  Your very first mission arc from Kalinda gets you 7 merits, but the first blueside arc I had been using was the Hollows, which takes a lot longer to get to.  Those merits exchanged for converters ASAP are a tremendous head start.

Great read. While I'm a long time player and forums lurker; I've never tried to convert merits into converters. How and wheres does one do this? 

[Yomo Kimyata]

9 minutes ago, ThrillMill said:

Great read. While I'm a long time player and forums lurker; I've never tried to convert merits into converters. How and wheres does one do this? 

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Reward_Merit_Vendor

[ThrillMill]

18 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Reward_Merit_Vendor

Thanks for the info. Would you also happen to know what arcs can be run solo for merits via Oroborus? 

[tidge]

On 5/2/2020 at 8:58 AM, ThrillMill said:

Thanks for the info. Would you also happen to know what arcs can be run solo for merits via Oroborus? 

It never occurred to me that there would be any Ouroboros arcs that don't give merits! Perhaps the odd badge missions don't?

 

If you are explicitly trying a 24-hour challenge specificaly to raise Inf on a brand new lvl 1, running Ouro missions may interfere with time spent in the market house. There is a balance-point between mission difficulty/length and reward for 'level-appropriate' arcs. If the toon has already achieved higher level and wants to run lower-level content I have a few suggestions for lower-level characters:

 

Signature Story Arc (SSA) 1: Who Will Die? (Skyway or Cap Au Diable) - claims to be levels 10-20, I don't think I've every run it lower than lvl 20. The first time a toon runs any SSA mission it is worth 20 merits. Additionally, after running an SSA mission the first time, once a week any one SSA mission can be repeated to get you another 20 merits.  Each side has 3 missions in the arc. Blue side requires four fights, Red side allows you to skip all fighting in the first mission, but the final mission has more required fighting. DPS toons should be able to finish in about 5 minutes, non-DPS toons (including Masterminds) should be able to finish in 10-11 minutes.

 

Aaron Thiery (Atlas Park): You will run this one with only a few powers, but if they are well-slotted and you have the P2W prestige attacks you should have enough offense to finish this without problems. All of the missions are close to one another, but they do require 'defeats', and you must travel back to city hall to finish the arc. This is a 5 merit reward that includes a rare recipe drop at the end.

 

There are other arcs that give more merits, but those are at a higher level and will require somewhat decent builds. The only thing a low level player really could use on the two arcs I posted would be Stealth (such as an IO in a travel power).

[ThrillMill]

19 hours ago, tidge said:

It never occurred to me that there would be any Ouroboros arcs that don't give merits! Perhaps the odd badge missions don't?

 

If you are explicitly trying a 24-hour challenge specificaly to raise Inf on a brand new lvl 1, running Ouro missions may interfere with time spent in the market house. There is a balance-point between mission difficulty/length and reward for 'level-appropriate' arcs. If the toon has already achieved higher level and wants to run lower-level content I have a few suggestions for lower-level characters:

 

Signature Story Arc (SSA) 1: Who Will Die? (Skyway or Cap Au Diable) - claims to be levels 10-20, I don't think I've every run it lower than lvl 20. The first time a toon runs any SSA mission it is worth 20 merits. Additionally, after running an SSA mission the first time, once a week any one SSA mission can be repeated to get you another 20 merits.  Each side has 3 missions in the arc. Blue side requires four fights, Red side allows you to skip all fighting in the first mission, but the final mission has more required fighting. DPS toons should be able to finish in about 5 minutes, non-DPS toons (including Masterminds) should be able to finish in 10-11 minutes.

 

Aaron Thiery (Atlas Park): You will run this one with only a few powers, but if they are well-slotted and you have the P2W prestige attacks you should have enough offense to finish this without problems. All of the missions are close to one another, but they do require 'defeats', and you must travel back to city hall to finish the arc. This is a 5 merit reward that includes a rare recipe drop at the end.

 

There are other arcs that give more merits, but those are at a higher level and will require somewhat decent builds. The only thing a low level player really could use on the two arcs I posted would be Stealth (such as an IO in a travel power).

Wow, Tidge, Thank You! 

Even as a long time player back since Homecoming opened; I'm still surprised at my general lack of knowledge about the game. This is wonderful. 

[Ukase]

I certainly agree with the Sig. Story arc out of Skyway. I run this one for almost all of my characters as they reach levels 10-15. With Reveal from p2w, (10k inf) it's easy to see which paths to take to get out quickly in the first mission. I run it twice, back to back for a quick 40 merits. (20 each for the non-math people) 

I use half to sell for converters to sell for my start up costs. Gotta spend inf to make inf in many cases. At the least, I need to have enough to post things of higher value. The other half I use to actually convert stuff. 

[ThrillMill]

23 hours ago, Ukase said:

I certainly agree with the Sig. Story arc out of Skyway. I run this one for almost all of my characters as they reach levels 10-15. With Reveal from p2w, (10k inf) it's easy to see which paths to take to get out quickly in the first mission. I run it twice, back to back for a quick 40 merits. (20 each for the non-math people) 

I use half to sell for converters to sell for my start up costs. Gotta spend inf to make inf in many cases. At the least, I need to have enough to post things of higher value. The other half I use to actually convert stuff. 

I've started running it. You're right! It's quick and fairly easy. I still faceplant at that Obilisk mission from time to time 😞


Is there a resource that you know of that lists missions and what, if any, merits they award for completion? 

Thanks

[Ura Hero]

Here is the merit list from GM Kai.

 

 

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, ThrillMill said:

I've started running it. You're right! It's quick and fairly easy. I still faceplant at that Obilisk mission from time to time 😞


Is there a resource that you know of that lists missions and what, if any, merits they award for completion? 

Thanks

The good news is that paragon wiki will tell you what we USED to get. HC seems to have increased the amount of merits in some cases, but there is no "Master" list of merits for HC that I'm aware of. 

Without thinking, I tried to update the paragon wiki and got a reminder that there are now a zillion different flavors of CoH and it may well be that none of them are the same, so they removed my edit, as they should. 

It may be a project worth undertaking. Certainly a lot of merits would be earned. 

[ThrillMill]

On 5/6/2020 at 9:53 AM, Ura Hero said:

Here is the merit list from GM Kai.

 

 

Ura my hero, sir. Merit FARMING HERE I COME!